


Peucetia Viridana SMASH!

by ladyknightanka



Series: Along Came a Spider-Man [2]
Category: The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Banter, Coulson Lives, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Gratuitous Pop-Culture References, Mentors, Mild Language, Minor Violence, Nerdiness, Robbery, Role Models, Snark, Superfamily
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-23
Updated: 2013-03-23
Packaged: 2017-12-06 06:26:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/732465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyknightanka/pseuds/ladyknightanka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The itsy bitsy spider and a green rage monster walk into a bank. Peter only wishes he could say it was a bad joke, but if nothing else, there's at least a <i>punch</i>line.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Peucetia Viridana SMASH!

**Author's Note:**

> This is a long time coming, and I'm sorry for that, but _school_. D: 
> 
> Also, I meant for this to be a Tony/Peter segment, and that ended up not happening. The next one will be, though, I promise!
> 
> For now, Bruce? :D?

-

Peucetia Viridana SMASH!

-

_Peucetia Viridana: a species of spider found only in India and Myanmar. Like other lynx spiders, they rely on keen eyesight when hiding from enemies, or stalking, chasing and ambushing prey. The species 'peucetia', however, are active runners and leapers, commonly larger, vivid green, and rangy. In Latin, 'viridana' means “becoming green”._  
  
Three days later, Peter still doesn't know what the heck he'll do about the CIA's invitation. ...Well, okay, _SHIELD_ , not the CIA, but a secret government agency by any other name, blah-blah-blah.  
  
The _point_ is, Peter's so plainly conflicted, Aunt May loses some of her initial ardor over his 'internship', and sits him down to say, “Honey, whatever you decide to do, I'll be proud of you.”  
  
“Thanks, Aunt May,” he tells her, swallowing hard, because maybe, someday, they'll have a similar conversation about Spider-Man. Maybe.  
  
For now, he lets her gentle hands card through his already messy hair till it sticks up on one side, and maybe falls asleep against her shoulder, drooling out a puddle. Maybe. ...In his defense, he was out all night, helping the FDNY put out a Class B fire. He _deserves_ to drool.  
  
When he wakes up, he's spreadeagled across the couch, a handmade quilt tucked up to his shoulders, his glasses perched on top of the coffee table. He feels more rested than he has in the months since he was bitten.  
  
Before he can sit up, stretch, or check the watch on his wrist, his aunt ambles in and asks, “Oh, Peter, are you awake? You've been out like a light for hours.”  
  
“Uh, yeah,” he replies.  
  
 _Hours_. He shoots a glance toward the cluster of windows in the foyer. The sun hasn't set just yet, from what he can figure, but it's decidedly on the verge. Reddish gold light ebbs against glass panes and curtains, a subtle neener-neener-neener from fate. So much for that afternoon patrol he'd planned.  
  
“Good. I've left a sandwich on the counter for you.”  
  
Aunt May's cheerful voice brings him back to the present. He realizes that she's donned her coat and is on the brink of stepping out, her purse pressed beneath an arm. He rises before she can, nearly tripping over his feet in his haste, and sets a hand on her shoulder to stop her.  
  
“I, um. Where are you off to? I can do errands. Eggs again?”  
  
Aunt May laughs, but it rings hollow. She probably hasn't forgotten the last time he came home with eggs. Super healing or not, he was sore for over a week, a record for Spider-Man. Sometimes, late at night, he still feels the phantom sting of claws.  
  
“Actually, Peter,” she says, little creases forming around her eyes to highlight her teasing tone, “I was going to the bank to deposit a check. Can you handle that? It's a bit more complicated than groceries, I'm afraid.”  
  
“Pfft, no problem,” he declares, playing along. After accepting the envelop she plucks out of her purse, he dutifully recites her account number for her, already knowing it by heart. They share a smile. “I'll be back in a snap, Aunt May.”  
  
On the way out, he replaces his glasses, grabs his backpack, Spider-Man's suit bundled up inside, and kicks the tail of his skateboard to flip it into his arms, before dropping a kiss onto her weathered cheek. Although he loves web-slinging as much as the next spider-themed superhero, he has to admit, he's missed his battered old board. He and Uncle Ben had spent hours decorating it, once upon a time.  
  
It gets him to his destination just fine. He beams the whole while, relishing in the crisp spring air that blasts against his unmasked face, a herald between winter and summer, but his shoulders sag when he finds every teller in the bank already hosting a line. He hops off the board, sticks it in his bag, and worms himself into the one with the least amount of people.  
  
A man slips behind him and murmurs, “It's busier than I thought it'd be.”  
  
“It's New York, man, what do ya expect?” replies Peter, without actually looking at him.  
  
The man chuckles. “I suppose it'll take some getting used to again.”  
  
Peter opens his mouth to answer, but no words leaks through, because three more men lope into the bank and bring with them the distinct feeling of wrongness that he's come to call his spidey-sense. _Danger, Will Robinson, danger,_ his brain supplies. The man at his rear tenses up, as well.  
  
“This is a stick up,” a nasally new voice says, accentuated by a gunshot to the ceiling, and if Peter wasn't stuck out in the open, unable to suit up, he might have rolled his eyes. Who even uses the words 'stick up' anymore? Even Captain America would call it gauche.  
  
As it is, Peter and every other non-bank robber in the building angle toward the guy in alarm. His grinning buddies flank him. All three wear ski-masks and pack guns, carry-on bags hooked around their free arms, ready to be filled with cash.  
  
It's all uncomfortably cliché, but Peter can almost _feel_ the fear that filtrates the air. A woman hugs her young daughter close. A baby begins to wail. An old man holding a cane quivers on frail legs. Peter studies them all, eyes wide, and knows one thing with absolute certainty.  
  
If it comes down to it, to save these people, he'd reveal himself.  
  
“Everyone behind the counter, keep your hands where we can see 'em, away from any pesky alarms. The rest of you, get on the floor,” one of the masked men, a different one from the first, orders. He swipes handguns from the security guards' belts and tosses them into a bag.  
  
Peter doesn't want to create further tension. Not yet, anyway. He lowers himself onto his belly so he can keep watching the scene play out. Maybe they'll just take what they want and leave, giving him the opportunity to follow as Spider-Man, but this is yet another 'maybe' that leaves a sour taste in his mouth.  
  
“You–” a third masked man, this one with a machine gun, says to a female teller, “–can fill my friends' bags up. Any sudden moves, from _any_ of you, and I'll blow all of your heads off. Better hope no cops drive by, sweetheart.”  
  
The teller nods, blue eyes tearful, but her hands don't shake as she works, and there's something brave about that. The man on the ground beside Peter, on the other hand, shudders bodily. Peter coasts his gaze over him. His dark eyes and curly hair are familiar, except his features blur beneath a light sheen of sweat, as if Peter's looking at him through an aquarium fish-tank.  
  
“Dude, you okay?” he whispers.  
  
The man starts to respond, but booted feet stomp into their peripheral vision. Rough fingers immerse in Peter's hair, jerking his head back whiplash-fast. His neck cricks in protest and an embarrassing whimper escapes his gritted teeth.  
  
“No talking,” Nasally Voice says, patronizingly conversational. He releases Peter only to drop another bag. “You can stick your phone in here, though, junior. Don't want nobody callin' the police, now do we?”  
  
Peter does as requested, as do the other hostages. Peter can feel the troubled stare of the man beside him boring into his skull, and hears his wheezing inhales, but ignores them in favor of relief because Number Two declines Machine Gun's suggestion to grab the rest of their valuables. For now, Peter's bag, the suit, is safe.  
  
The tellers soon empty all available registers. Machine Gun herds them out from behind their counters and bids everyone on the ground to rise. Peter catches Nasally Voice muttering something about vaults. His stomach drops further than it had the first time he jumped off a skyscraper, and this time, not a shred of adrenaline-spiked pleasure chases the feeling.  
  
The bank brags two vaults: one for clients' lock-boxes, the other for cash. It's the first that they get shoved into. Peter stands at the very end of this line, Machine Gun's muzzle incisive against the small of his back, but it's the blue-eyed teller, once again, who gets dragged out with the robbers. The echo of the slamming vault door reverberates in their wake.  
  
“Dammit,” Peter says under his breath.  
  
He cases the dim room. He vision is better than most people's – thirty-twenty, even if he still sometimes wears his glasses to allay suspicion – so he can clearly see that the old man has fallen to the ground, a younger man supporting him by the arm. The three parents of the bunch have overtaken a corner with their inconsolable kids, the disarmed security guards doing the same with another. Everyone else meanders around, aimless and afraid.  
  
And then there's the man from earlier. He's dressed like a laid-back college professor, the sleeves of his wrinkled dress shirt rolled up to his elbows, a tweed jacket tied around his hips, his slacks in need of a good ironing, but his knees are pulled up like a child's, his arms wrapped around them, his head ducked low. Even in the darkness, Peter can see that he's sickly pale – that he hasn't stopped shivering or panting.  
  
Peter plops down next to him and asks, for the second time, “Are you okay?” When the man glances up, he gasps. This time, he can unquestionably put a name to his face. “Y-you're Dr. Bruce Banner!”  
  
“Shh,” says the man, grimacing.  
  
Peter snaps his jaw shut. Crap. He shouldn't have said that so loudly. Bruce Banner, the Incredible Hulk, is currently cooped up in a claustrophobic vault with at least ten oblivious civilians, and he's looking a little green. Peter swallows.  
  
“So, uh, you're Dr. Banner?” he tries again.  
  
“Yes,” comes the curt reply. “I suppose you've...heard of my work?”  
  
“I–” Peter starts, but stops himself. He breaks out into a bashful smile, “–really loved your dissertation on the origin of molecules. I bought your book as soon as it officially released. Your thesis was _awesome_ , the most feasible that I've ever read on the topic.” This shocks a chuff of laughter from Bruce. Peter grins wider, then adds more quietly, “Is there anything I can do to help?”  
  
Bruce winces again, but says, “Yeah. Yeah, l-let's just keep talking, okay? What's your name?”  
  
“Peter. Peter Parker.”  
  
“It's nice to meet you, Peter Parker.” Bruce returns his smile. “So, are you interested in science? It's nice to see that in someone your age.”  
  
“Oh yeah, totally.” Peter extends his skateboard, which he'd stuffed into his bag earlier, alongside the suit. Bruce whistles at a few of the more complex equations marking it. “Science, math, mechanics. They're all great – _not_ that most of my classmates would agree.”  
  
“I can imagine,” laughs Bruce. He looks and sounds a bit better now, his fingers no longer clinched like a vice around his legs. He hesitates a moment before inquiring, “Parker... Was your father, by any chance, Dr. Richard Parker?”  
  
“Y-you knew him?” Peter asks, flinching when the waver in his voice reaches his ears. He sounds like someone kicked him in the diaphragm. Repeatedly. He should know, too, since it's happened before.  
  
“Uh, yes. I collaborated very briefly with Richard, before...”  
  
Bruce trails off, remorse softening his brown eyes, and Peter nods. _Before_. He doesn't really remember before, but telling Bruce that, he thinks, will only make him feel needlessly guilty for bringing it up in the first place. Besides, Bruce has his own 'before', and it probably sucks just as much. Peter flashes him a fake smile.  
  
“So, where'd ya go after that failed intergalactic _coup d'état_ , anyway?”  
  
“Bhubaneswar, India,” says Bruce, a little chagrined. “I came here to exchange currency, truth be told. Now, I'm wishing I had picked another bank.”  
  
Peter nods sympathetically. “Bad luck, doc, but India... That sounds pretty cool. I've never even been outta New York.”  
  
He can tell he's not the only one who savors the change of subject. For the next twenty minutes, Bruce's trip remains their preferred topic of discussion. Peter lets himself relax a little. He's sure a) the robbers will be done soon, b) some good Samaritan will realize no one's manning the bank, or c) that no one whose loved ones left for it returned home. Someone, somewhere, will call the police to bust them out, before anything worse happens. And then he'll kick some ass. Or so he hopes.  
  
When the wail of police sirens in the distance finally pierces the steel of the vault, however, and the latch on its door begins to twist, Peter's stomach drops. This will be a death toll, not a saving bell, he already knows.  
  
Number Two enters their enclosed shelter to corroborate his prediction, his pistol's tip flush against the crying blue-eyed teller's temple. “Who the fuck called the cops?” he growls.  
  
Peter sucks in a breath, and the sound draws Number Two's gaze. He mentally curses again. _So close_. It doesn't matter, though – doesn't matter who, inside or out, tipped off the police before the thieves got what they wanted. It doesn't matter how Bruce's shaking his head at him, brisk and pained.  
  
Peter stands up and cants his chin. “ _I_ did it, Sundance. I had another phone in my bag. What are you, Butch, and Cassidy gonna do about it?”  
  
“I told you we should have taken their bags!” exclaims Machine Gun, waving his weapon.  
  
Before either can shoot someone, before Peter can even react, Nasally Voice saunters into the vault and pistol-whips him. His glasses hit the ground with an audible crack. A hiss seeps through his clenched teeth, and stars start to dance behind his eyelids, pretty as the surely colorful new bruise that will blossom on his cheek.  
  
“W-wait,” he chokes out when a meaty fist wraps around his bicep to drag him out of the vault, his spidey-sense throbbing in time with his abused face, but the door's already clanging shut.  
  
For a second, a single second, nothing happens. Peter stumbles complacently behind his captors, on the cusp of escaping. Then, something _roars_ , rips the vault door off its hinges, and tosses it at the unsuspecting robbers like an Olympic discus, while they gape stupidly.  
  
Peter leaps first to a lateral wall, then up to the ceiling of the bank, hanging upside down there by his feet. Below him, a cacophony of screams, ambient sirens, and crashes echo, the Hulk shouting “Smash!” like a mantra.  
  
Peter's own mantra happens to be, “Crap!”  
  
He crawls toward a sizable chandelier and, in spite of its pendulum-like motion, changes into his suit on its swinging frame. He gets the mask on just in time for another blow of big green fists against the bankers' counter to knock the chandelier off its axis.  
  
“Whoa there, big guy!” he calls down, as he uses a line of webbing to guide the falling chandelier over the heads of screeching civilians, safely onto the empty area the tellers had evacuated. “Can't we just talk this out like rational folks?”  
  
“Who there?” demands the Hulk, roving to scowl up at Peter, spittle flecking out of his mouth. Like a bull, his nostrils flare and puff hot air, but for the moment, he doesn't attack.  
  
“Just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man,” answers Peter, feigning cheer.  
  
He drops himself into a crouch in front of the Hulk, atop a pile of debris. This puts him between the enraged creature and what innocent people had, perhaps unwisely, left the vault. To his right, the unconscious and bleeding bank-robbing trio lay in a heap of plausibly broken limbs, half covered by the vault door.  
  
Peter winces on their behalf. _That's gonna smart in the morning._  
  
He can't focus on them any longer, though, because the Hulk charges at him, shouting, “Hulk smash little bug!”  
  
“Whoa,” Peter says again, flipping back onto the ceiling in a show of great dexterity, this time with a squirming man and woman under each arm. He walks backward, upside down, till he reaches the vault, sets them down at its mouth, and tells them, “Stay inside, okay? You'll be safer there.”  
  
“Y-yeah, Spider-Man,” the woman stutters, reeling the man in with her.  
  
Peter nods at them and their fellow hostages, hoping to relay comfort and confidence. They hug one another, cowering in the back, and the sight gives him the resolve to hurry out and face the Hulk again, chin raised in defiance against the creature's snarl.  
  
“First thing,” Peter says, bringing a finger up. “Spiders are arachnids, not bugs. You think you'd know that, being a world renowned scientist and all. Second–”  
  
The Hulk neither gives him a chance to lift another finger, nor to speak, swatting him aside like a fly. Peter hits the wall and, with a wounded cry, slides back down. It takes him time to get up again. He sways, watching the Hulk approach him through the cracked, reflective glass of his eyes.  
  
Outside, the cops announce, “Spider-Man and associates, come out with your hands up!”  
  
“'Associates'?” repeats Peter, a note of hysteria in his voice. “Seriously?”  
  
He can just imagine tomorrow's Daily Bugle headlines: _Masked Menace Spider-Man Recruits Evil Friends to Terrorize Civilians at a Bank._ He's not sure the Hulk, despite being an Avenger, will get out of it stock-free, either.  
  
Of his merry band of superheroes, he's the one with the worst rep, since he's big and green and smash-happy, and once destroyed Harlem. This situation definitely won't help matters. And maybe, Peter muses vindictively, dodging a punch, only to get caught in the ribs by an uppercut, bad press is the least he deserves.  
  
Then again...  
  
“Dr. Banner,” he shouts, vaulting himself onto the wall farthest from the Hulk, “I know you're in there! I know you Hulked out to save m– Er, I mean, that kid, Parker, but he's safe now, so you can stop! You did it! You got him out!”  
  
He half expects to provoke yet more wrath, but the Hulk just rumbles, “Hulk not puny doctor,” and for the longest few minutes of Peter's short life, glowers at him. Then, the green saps out of the creature's skin, it shrinks in on itself, pants slipping, and a very naked Bruce Banner starts to collapse.  
  
Peter springs forward to catch the man, before releasing a curse, because the sirens and voices outside are, abruptly, drowned out by the slash and slice of helicopter blades displacing air. _What now?_ he asks himself, clutching Bruce tight.  
  
A familiar figure steps into the bank, sleek and radiating aplomb. “We'll take it from here, Spider-Man.”  
  
Bruce moans something inaudible from Peter's arms, but Peter ignores the man to exclaim, “What? You couldn't have come _five minutes earlier_ , Phil?” Coulson's responding frown foretells danger, reminding Peter that, appearances aside, he's a super-spy who knows where Peter lives. “Er, I mean, thanks, Agent Coulson, for your, uh, timely assistance,” he backtracks.  
  
Coulson's lips quirk into an amused smirk. “You kid, but you'll thank me as soon as you walk out of here.”  
  
A woman in a skirt suit moves to relieve Bruce's burden from Peter, who considers Coulson's words for a second, then says, “Wait, you mean I _can_ walk out? Like, without getting frisked and handcuffed? 'Cause I have to say, I'm a lot less kinky than most guys in masks.”  
  
“As I said,” Coulson replies, with a magnanimous one-shouldered shrug, “you'll be thanking me soon. Just try to keep out your nose clean for the rest of the week, and maybe you'll live long enough to meet Stark. We'll be taking Banner to him shortly.”  
  
“I'm thanking you now, sir, but no guarantees,” says Peter with a rakish salute, before noticing that Bruce, who'd been relocated to lean against the remains of the tellers' counter, a blanket across his bare legs, has startled into consciousness. “Thanks for the party, doc,” he tells the man, not entirely insincere for all his insouciance.  
  
Bruce blinks at him, bedraggled and bleary-eyed, but recognition swims deep in his dark, muddled gaze, on the border of epiphany. Peter offers Coulson a final, jerky nod, grabs his stuff from the wreckage of the chandelier, and bows out quickly, dodging irritated cops and apathetic SHIELD agents outside.  
  
True to Coulson's word, no one busts out their guns or cuffs, so from the safety of a proximate building's rooftop, Peter watches as the unconscious bank-robbers are hauled out, the hostages removed more carefully. They're all safe, _alive_.  
  
It's only when he gets home, ribs smarting like bongo drums, that he recalls Aunt May's check. But that's just the Parker luck striking again.

-

END!

_-_

**Author's Note:**

> How was that? _Smashing?_ *dodges rocks* Let me know what you thought! *slinks off to her cave again*
> 
> Info from Wiki again. That might become a thing.


End file.
